


find a place (where there's room to grow)

by iasipspec



Series: IASIPspec [1]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Dennis Has Big Feelings, Episode: s12e10 Coda, Gen, Mandy from North Dakota is an actual angel, who deserves better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 08:24:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10486473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iasipspec/pseuds/iasipspec
Summary: "You're not happy."And he doesn’t know what to say, so he says “What?” like he didn’t hear her, but he did, but he doesn’twantto have heard her.“You’re not happy,” Mandy repeats.[ North Dakota. Mandy is insightful. Dennis compromises. ]





	

**Author's Note:**

> Something of a prequel to our upcoming series of spec scripts, but can easily be read as a plain ol' coda to s12e10. Title is taken from "We've Only Just Begun" by The Carpenters. Enjoy!

“You’re not happy.”

It comes suddenly, quickly. Brian Jr. is playing with some little dollhouse (Dennis had raised an eyebrow at that, but Mandy had replied with something about “A gender neutral upbringing!” which had shut him up) on the floor, and the two of them have been kind of blankly watching 60 Minutes for about a half hour at this point when she finally looks him dead in the eyes and tells him.

And he doesn’t know what to say, so he says “What?” like he didn’t hear her, but he did, but he doesn’t _want_ to have heard her.

“You’re not happy,” Mandy repeats. When he first met her he remembers thinking God that accent is grating, but after a while it started to grow on him. Just a little, though. “Here. With us. You’re not, I can tell.”

“What makes you say that?” he asks. His stomach sinks.

“You know, contrary to what you seem to think, I’m not stupid,” is all she says. “You love Brian Jr., I know that. And he loves you too. But you don’t love me, and you don’t love North Dakota.”

As if on cue, Brian Jr. raises his little blonde head and smiles widely, gurgling “Mama an’ Dada,” at them. He raises one hand and waves at this kid. Brian Jr. wraps one chubby fist around a wobbling Weeble fireman figure that had been sitting placidly in the attic of the dollhouse and thrusts it at them proudly, as if to say, “Look at me, I can hold things now!”

But Dennis doesn’t know what to say to her, so he just focuses his stare onto the TV, watching the balding host of the show describe some groundbreaking Broadway musical that’s changing the world or some other shit. 

“You can’t just ignore me because you don’t like what I’m saying.”

He’s starting to remember why he didn’t like her voice, and it wasn’t because of her accent. She had this uncanny ability to know things about him, like when he had told her his name was Brian Lefevre and she hadn’t bought it for like, point-two seconds.

“Yeah, I guess.” 

“Well you either do or you don’t.”

“I don’t,” and it feel weird to say it out loud, like he’s breaking some seal or soiling something precious. What was it about parenting that made you not want to say what you really felt? Shove everything under the rug, go around behind your partner’s back, but to their face pretend everything was going fine.

That was all his Mom did. That was all that Frank did. They snuck around, but in public they just smiled at each other. He could imagine his parents in this exact position, sitting on the couch while he and Dee played with some toy in front of the TV. And they had behaved exactly the same as he was acting with her right now, distant and quiet, watch the kid play with their toys and pretend nothing was going wrong.

It was refreshing to hear someone try to understand what was going on inside their partner’s head instead of burying it underneath. Maybe all partnerships didn’t have to be like his parents’.

“I just don’t know how it would work.” Dennis says it lamely, grasping at straws. “I mean, different states? He’s barely three.”

“We can work something out,” she told him earnestly. “He can spend some holidays with you. We can fly to Philly for a few weekends a year, you can pick him up at the airport. I don’t mind.”

All he can muster out is a hoarse “Why?”, because the thought of anyone giving two shits about him or putting him first is frankly disturbing and a bit strange to him.

And Mandy just replies, “Because it’s not fair to either of us if we’re both unhappy here. Unhappy parents raise unhappy children. And I’d rather Brian Jr. have a father in another state than an unhappy father with him 24/7.”

“Are you sure you’d be --”

“I’m more than sure.” She waves her hand. “I didn’t come to Philadelphia to trap you with me.” Suddenly, her eyes grow big (The same doe-eyed look that’d seemed so goddamned cute when he had seen her across the room in that Applebees), and she asks, “That’s not the impression I gave off, did it? I swear, I didn’t come to Philly to try and trap you with me.”

That gets Dennis chuckling, sardonic. Laugher out of madness. He can’t believe what’s happening now. “No, you didn’t.”

“Then why’d you come?”

Deep breath. He looks at Brian Jr. “I guess I didn’t want him to be without a dad.”

“And he won’t be.” Mandy smiles with her lips closed. She’d told him it was force of habit, because in the eighth grade she’d been embarassed about having braces, and he hadn’t really been focusing on the words coming out of her mouth at that moment, but in hindsight that was kind of a cute story. “I promise, he won’t be. Like I said, as long as you’re willing to work with me here, we can figure out how to best get a system working.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s lucky to have a mom like you,” he tells her, thinking to himself that this is the most sincere he has ever been speaking to a woman. “Willing to co-parent across state lines.”

“And he’s lucky to have a Dad like you,” she replies. “Willing to move away from everything he’s ever know just to be a good father.”

They smile at one another. He swears he can hear cheesy, tinkling Full House-style synth music, the kind of song they’d play whenever a Tearful Moment happened on screen. Brian Jr. tosses one of his Weebles at the television set, and it hits the side of the box with a loud clunk that startles them both. When they look over at him, he only grins.

*

Two hours later he pulls his cell phone out of his pocket, and after staring at the contact page for twenty minutes he finally presses his thumb to the ‘call’ button and prepares the best way to broach the topic of returning to Philly, and hopes to a God (that he’s still not entirely sure if he believes in) that Mac doesn’t hang up on him when he does.


End file.
